Energy transition of Slovak and Czech cities: who will finance it and how?

On 24-25 March 2015 in Bratislava (Slovakia), Energy Cities together with the Slovak Union of Towns and Cities and its interest association CITENERGO co-organised a workshop on innovative financing and multi-level governance.

Front-running Slovak and Czech cities and regions engaged in energy transition shared information on their sustainable energy investments, local financing schemes and partnerships with financing institutions, national authorities and private sector. Litomerice (Energy Cities’ member) presented its local revolving energy fund, Pardubicky region evaluated its six large Energy Performance Contracting schemes, Brno-Novy Liskovec showed results for its revolving investment fund for renovation of panel blocks of flats to a low energy standard and city of Bratislava and Presov region showed how they obtained ELENA technical assistance for the implementation of aggregated investment packages in the field of municipal buildings and public lighting.

Representatives of national institutions – managing authorities of the European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF) – such as Slovak Innovation and Energy Agency, The State Fund for Housing Development, Ministry of Finance – presented how the ESIF will be used to support cities’ energy transition. JESSICA Holding Fund for renovation of residential buildings and Slovak Investment Holding which will manage and distribute financial instruments via six sub-funds (incl. Urban Development and Energy Efficiency Funds) were also presented. These should be operational by the end of 2015.

Financing institutions such as Prva Stavebna Sportitelna or Vseobecna Uverova Banka also shared their experiences and views on future cooperation with cities.

Roman Doubrava from the European Commission – DG ENER informed the participants about the current and planned EU policies, funds and programmes supporting cities in their move towards a low carbon economy while Jana Cicmanova from Energy Cities shared innovative practices tested by European cities. For his part, Marian Minarovic, Secretary General of the Slovak Union of Towns and Cities confirmed the commitment of his association to support the Slovak cities and regions in implementing the Covenant of Mayors objectives and to continue coordinating the multi-level dialogue via the Covenant of Mayors national platforms.

The workshop was organised in the framework of the European ManagEnergy initiative supported by the Intelligent Energy Europe programme.